#SupremeCourt decision is ‘a constitutional coming out party’ for #socialmedia – #Impacts on future of #data

This caught my #attention because it addresses the issue of how public, semi-public and private spaces will be delineated online as relates to offline situations. These are issues I feel the public does not think enough about. And still I wonder is it because people don’t care or that they don’t understand the complex array of implications flowing from these decisions.

I won’t go to deeply into that here but for those that are interested in wading to the deep end of the pool….you can read my paper that touches on related aspects via the implications and possible fall out inadequate conceptual frameworks, and failure to consider that “Informed Consent” needs to evolve when so much is at stake for individuals who don’t adequately perceive the situation they are consenting to.

Supreme Court decision is ‘a constitutional coming out party’ for social media

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that sex offenders can’t be broadly banned from using social media.The First Amendment ruling sets a precedent about denying access to social media sites and raises questions about their role as a public forum.The North Carolina law, established in 2008, made it illegal for registered sex offenders to use websites that minors also use. That included Facebook (FB, Tech30), Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) and many other popular sites….”This case is one of the first this court has taken to address the relationship between the First Amendment and the modern internet,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion, which struck down North Carolina’s law.

In the opinion, Kennedy said the law was too broad and North Carolina did not prove why a wholesale ban on social media was necessary.”In a lot of ways, it’s a constitutional coming out party for social media companies,” said Alex Abdo, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It puts social media platforms on equal footing with other important areas of First Amendment expression.”But, Abdo said, the lingering question is whether the courts will eventually come to view social media platforms as public forums in their entirety.